Prerequisite: HIS 3051 Craft of the Historian or permission of instructor.
The archaic Age of Greece (8th to 5th centuries BCE) began with the epic poetry of Homer and ended with the first work of Greek history, by Herodotus. This course will explore the forces that shaped Greek society: the formation of the polis, the introduction of the alphabet, the spread of Greek settlements along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the development of Greek art, architecture, poetry and philosophy, and the rise of democracy in Athens. It will investigate the intellectual climate that gave birth to the discipline of history in Greece as a way of understanding the past and the present.